Wishlist: Split InstallAware installer into two parts?
Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 5:54 pm
Installing InstallAware takes quite a bit of time. Uninstalling and then re-installing a new version similarly takes quite a long time. This is primarily due to the massive set of bundled system runtimes for every possible version of .Net, SqlServer, etc, etc. Which is all GREAT! I like how capable you have made the tool.
As is, however, it can take hours for me to update InstallAware when a new version is released.
I think product updates could be much faster and more efficient if the installer were split into two pieces.
I think it would be very nice to have a main InstallAware installer, which installs the IDE, the dialog editor, the compiler, etc -- everything other than the system runtime packages.
And a separate InstallAware System Runtime installer, which installs only the system runtimes for .Net, SqlServer, etc, etc.
In this way, the InstallAware System Runtime installer would only need to be updated whenever some new runtime is added or changed by Microsoft, which is going to be somewhat infrequent. This way, the huge InstallAware System Runtime package would not need to be uninstalled, or downloaded, or reinstalled, simply because the main InstallAware installer had been incremented to a newer version. And this would allow much faster and much smaller product updates whenever the main InstallAware components are improved, without needing to bundle in the Runtime components.
This is just an idea -- take it or leave it. But I do think it would allow for a much better and faster product upgrade experience.
As is, however, it can take hours for me to update InstallAware when a new version is released.
I think product updates could be much faster and more efficient if the installer were split into two pieces.
I think it would be very nice to have a main InstallAware installer, which installs the IDE, the dialog editor, the compiler, etc -- everything other than the system runtime packages.
And a separate InstallAware System Runtime installer, which installs only the system runtimes for .Net, SqlServer, etc, etc.
In this way, the InstallAware System Runtime installer would only need to be updated whenever some new runtime is added or changed by Microsoft, which is going to be somewhat infrequent. This way, the huge InstallAware System Runtime package would not need to be uninstalled, or downloaded, or reinstalled, simply because the main InstallAware installer had been incremented to a newer version. And this would allow much faster and much smaller product updates whenever the main InstallAware components are improved, without needing to bundle in the Runtime components.
This is just an idea -- take it or leave it. But I do think it would allow for a much better and faster product upgrade experience.